Inspired by true events, 'The Blue Hour' is a story of political intrigue and doomed love set in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire during the summer of 1876. All prince Hamid and the Belgian glove-maker, Flora Cordier, want is to pursue their for...
Further on still, they encountered exotic animals trapped in cages of all shapes and sizes. Flora stopped in her tracks and stared: snakes, monkeys, and a variety of birds,spectacular wild peacocks, sparrows and swallows, colourful, chattering parrots, tiny songbirds and powerful fighting cocks. It broke her heart to see so many caged animals, some in constant, restless movement, others weak and lethargic.
Seeing her unhappiness, Hamid hurried past the cages. The straw which covered the trampled earthen floor crackled under their feet, and they grimaced at the sharp odour of excrement and fodder. She stopped by a cage with a scrawny, golden furred baby monkey. Through the thin bars of a cage, the monkey looked at her with black, round eyes. Her heart dropped.
"Poor thing."
A merchant appeared out of nowhere, gestured to the monkey and said in stuttering French: "If you love him, bring him home."
She jolted and shook her head vigorously.
Unfazed, the merchant continued: "Perhaps one of my rare birds will be more to your liking? White parrots, an Asian kakapo, and for you, Monsieur, a black condor, you will have seen nothing like it."
His eager eyes wandered from Flora to Hamid, and back to Flora. He clapped his hands together: "Ah, love, such a rare and beautiful thing to behold. I have just the thing for you."
Hamid shot her a bashful look, and she felt herself blush.
They followed the merchant to a group of stacked cages, each with a small bird inside, slender with long tapering tales, brown plumage and black eyes.
Hamid shot Flora another embarrassed glance: "Turtledoves."
"Oh."
He held her gaze and smiled. Bewildered, she smiled back at him, they smiled at each other, and they both laughed.
Hamid dropped some coins in the man's hand. "What will this buy me?"
The merchant stared at the coins and broke into a toothless grin. "For that, Effendi, you get the birds, the cages, and bearers as well."
They left the Bazaar with six cages, and three boys to carry them.
"What on earth will we do with them," she asked.
Hamid beamed. "It's an Ottoman tradition. Caged birds are like the souls of men, trapped inside their physical bodies and longing to be set free so they can reunite with God. We will set them free."
"Over the sea?"
"Yes, over the sea."
Guided by three young bearers in blue skull caps, Flora and Hamid were out of the Bazaar in no time. The boys arranged a ride for them with a horse-drawn farm cart which wobbled down one of the main roads leading out of the city.
Even though there was no risk of losing each other, Flora's hand rested in Hamid's, like a bird in its nest. They didn't speak, but from time to time, they glanced at each other and smiled.
His skin glistened from sweat. She noticed her own damp skin under the dress, the mutinous curls that stuck to her forehead and neck, and his glowing eyes which, she suspected, mirrored her own.
On foot, with the sun in their eyes, they descended diagonally down the slope of the fourth city hill, through the many flourishing cypress groves inside the crumbling Byzantine city walls. It was a long walk. They breathed in unison, deep and calm, as if they melted into one in the afternoon heat.
This far from the heart of the city, settlements were more sporadic; for a long stretch already, they hadn't seen a living soul other than a hunched old woman who whipped her heavily loaded donkey up the hill. A fresh spring breeze was blowing; it ruffled Flora's hair and the blue surface of the sea below. Like a ray of sun, an unfamiliar, softly vibrating feeling spread from her heart through her body.
By a fountain, they drank, and washed their hands and faces. On the path ahead, the boys ran barefoot, a swinging cage in each hand and disappeared behind the next grove.
She turned to look back at Galata bridge; it glimmered like gold, and beyond it, Pera. They were alone, out of sight from the world.
Hamid drew her close, touched her hair slightly, the tips of his fingers fluttered against her face, long enough to make her shiver, making her feel flushed and breathless. She let her fingertips trace the palm of his hand, upwards to the inside of his wrist. His flesh was soft and humid and she trembled. She trembled from the closeness of him. A wave rushed through her body, filling her with a sense of the life they could have together.
Her eye snagged on a flash of blue behind a thick cypress, she jolted and pulled away. Underneath her happiness, a feeling of discomfort appeared; it was the way the boy silently stared at her, with insolence in his brown almond-shaped eyes. In the heat, she had removed the shawl from her head and she stood exposed and helpless, feeling like the scrawny little monkey in its cage.
Hamid said something to the boy in Turkish and waved him away. For a moment, they both struggled to speak. He took her hand.
"You want to go back?"
"No," she said, though a part of her did want to flee.
As she followed Hamid, she noticed a new sense of pride in herself, she was here, in this unlikely place in the company of this strange and alluring and unlikely man, and although she could see the dark clouds building on the horizon, and that therefore her return to Pera would be hard and difficult, she made no move to leave, no move to abandon the path she had taken.
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Author's note
In 1876, the walls of Constantinople, also known as the Theodosian Walls, still stood as a formidable defensive structure, even though the city had been under Ottoman control for over four centuries.
Built in the 5th century during the reign of Emperor Theodosius II, these walls had protected the city from numerous sieges and attacks throughout its history. The walls consisted of a complex system of inner and outer walls, towers, moats, and gates, stretching for over 6 kilometers from the Sea of Marmara to the Golden Horn.
In fact, the walls of Constantinople were so well-constructed that when Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II successfully conquered the city in 1453, he entered through a small gate known as the Kerkoporta, which had been accidentally left open, rather than breaching the walls themselves.
